For Constitution Day, September 17, 2018, an Indigenous Reading of History:
Some history behind the Revolutionary War phrase "taxation without representation." Britain taxed the colonies to pay for the wars they were starting on the frontiers trying to take Indian land.
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| A young George Washington. |
This was the impetus for the Seven Years' War (known in US history books as the French and Indian War) that was actually begun by a young Virginia officer named George Washington who signed an admission in French (which he couldn't read) after being defeated by the French in an engagement that said he executed a French diplomat. This began the first World War and spread far beyond western Pennsylvania to the Caribbean, Europe and even Southeast Asia.
Historians often call it World War Zero. It doubled the British national debt (and laid the foundations for the British Empire
—Washington was the father of two great nations), hence the tax on the colonialists. It was due to their own land lust. 
And if you read the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson lists amongst the colonists' grievances King George III's siding with the tribes ("merciless Indian Savages") and his protection of their lands through the Proclamation of 1763 which forbade colonists settling west of the Appalachian mountains.
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